ÜBERCEO

Do you have any data regarding the age ranges for this CEO generation?
There are not many "Technology Benjamin Buttons" out there :-)

Many executives are starting to use Twitter, though they are primarily CXOs from technology companies: http://www.bigwinner.org/twitter-leaders

If I were a shareholder of a F100 company I wouldn't want to see the CEO Twitting away all day. However, I would want to see some people in the company active in the social media that matters to their customers.

That's what is missing from this survey--an audit of an organization's media footprint. All companies today are media publishers in one way or another, and they need to make sure the right people are in charge of the publishing.

CEOs need to mandate that this is being done but they don't need to be doing it themselves. However, it does help if you have some experience of the medium. But again, if the CEO surrounds themselves with the right people then they will know what needs to be done.

Interesting facts, thanks for sharing. However, I would not imply that CEOs are 'slackers' for not engaging in social media. CEOs of large companies, in this case the Fortune 100, have incredibly busy jobs with multiple demands filling their schedules. It'd be interesting to see what their level of SM awareness is as a group. This survey though, gives a good snapshot of those individuals. From the individual standpoint if I knew that a Fortune 100 CEO was on Twitter, FB and LI for hours of their day, I might be leary of when they are finding time to lead and grow the company. I also might be asking if they are out there so much on blogs, youtube, etc is it really that CEO or some PR person ghost-writing it.

An interesting potential solution is to have the CEO guest-tweet or guest-blog. Several companies have tried this with success. There guest appearance allows them the perception of connection without the commitment of singular accounts that they must individually manage.

While CEOs may be slower to adopt/engage in SM spheres, let's take a look at how their companies are using SM to engage their customers, key audiences and general public. Are their companies listening? responding? engaging? In today's world, it only makes sense that a Fortune 100 company is in the SM sphere, but to expect their CEOs to be leading the charge is perhaps unrealistic.

It could be that a number of these CEO's are generally not directly involved in any hands-on marketing efforts. You'd think maintaining a brand reputation would be important to an executive, but some are likely more used to just issuing authoritative statements. Investing time and effort into long-term branding interaction may seem like "the marketing department's job".

Wonder who will be the first to get involved?

Very interesting article. Thanks.

Let's flip this argument upside down: 99.9999% of you twittering away all day are not CEO's. You don't have what it takes to work 120 hour weeks and get the job done. That's 120 hours of work, not 100 hours of twittering and 20 hours of actual work. Anyone who has worked in investment banking knows that CEO's like to call you at 2am and expect you to have a project ready for them by sun up while they sleep in order to maximize productivity.
While I agree that there are myriad benefits to social networking I consider your assertion that CEO's are behind the curve a bit rediculous. They have marketing teams that deal with image and advertising. The web site shows the CEO's bio. (S)he's on the other end of a phone number if his/her stakeholders need to contact him/her.

Maybe CEOs shouldn't Twitter, the way most businesses use it it's a waste of time: http://bit.ly/ZA32J

I am more surprised that any of them had a presence in social media. Being CEO of an S&P100 company is generally an endpoint to their careers. They built up a big network and climbed to the top using old school methods (because that was all there was.) They have no need for the tools to advance their careers.

The other approach that I think you advocate is to use their social media profile as part of the marketing and PR for the company. That may be useful for CEOs whose personal brand is closely associated with the company's brand (like Steve Jobs). It may be less useful and confuse the marketing efforts of the company. There is a reason CEOs are generally not part of their company's marketing efforts.

Lastly, there is the uncertainty of how the SEC will address social media. The rules are very unclear. I have a few thoughts here: http://www.compliancebuilding.com/2009/04/27/corporate-blogs-and-tweets-must-keep-sec-in-mind/. There is a big downside for getting that wrong.

I see CEOs having a hard time coming up with a positive ROI for using social media, with a big downside for violating SEC disclosure rules.

It's all about the shareholders.

That's why people like Mark Cuban have a blog. Cause he ain't got shareholders.

I wanted to see Warren Buffett's Twitter account, but you don't actually state what you think it is. I checked @warren_buffett, which is clearly not his, and @warrenbuffett, which looks better but only has 673 followers, not the stated 7441 followers, and he's following 5 people (and their profiles pretty much prove it's not real).

I don't think Warren is on Twitter. He supposedly doesn't have a computer on his desk nor does he use e-mail.

Hi guys
Nice report but unfortunately I don't agree with that every Fortune 100 CEO should blog (http://bit.ly/I6Knw)

Does it matter if a CEO (or anyone else) uses blogs, twitter, etc or not? Not really? It doesn't factor into my decision making process when I purchase the products their companies make or provide. I'm sure CEOs have more to do than sit around all day a blog...hence they are CEOs and we are not.

There's also the security aspect. Especially these days when ACORN/COI recently paid about 38 low-lifes to ride chartered buses media in tow for a "protest tour" through the NYC burbs over the AIG bonuses. If I were a CEO I'm not sure I'd want my personal life plastered on some commonly available website. As a non-CEO I generally limit what I post anyway because you never know who's looking at your info. It amazes me all the people that put their entire life story and day to day events on-line.

I have to agree with the people that have already posted. I would like to add- have you read the comment sections available on some of the blogs and at the end of news articles and opinion pieces? Seriously, the abuse that runs rampant in these things shows the lower level of the life forms that inhabit these spheres. Why would a CEO have to cater to that?

You seem to have an incredibly naive take on things. In general being on twitter or social networking site has zero to do with being a good CEO, perhaps some companies should have people monitor such channels but that's all.

Why would CEOs actually want to be on social networks? They WANT to be hard to find by the customers who are mad /disappointed/ require assistance with their company's products or services. Ever try to get even the mail address, phone number, or email address for a CEO- a most difficult thing to do.

Many companies are even loath to assign lower end marketing people to social networks because it would mean that the company actually has to dedicate money and US based employee time solving customers questions. This is versus pawning customer problems off to a third party run offshore call center in India/Phillipines/etc for a script reading drone named "Mary" or "Bill" to attempt to help a customers concerns or a similarly sourced online "chat" service for the same results. Then the customers get to navigate endless phone trees or speak to many different people over and over again about the problem until hopefully the customer gives up in frustration or goes away.

This is one area in which service based companies such as Comcast Cable have already taken their licks from the publicity of bad customer experiences and are dedicating personell to solve the complaints of the most vocally connected ( leaving the unconnected to still struggle through phone trees etc).

Conversely most CEOs are socially networked in far more rarified and difficult to enter networks such as exclusive country clubs, high end political or management conferences, high end charity fund raising events. This allows the CEOs to circulate among themselves and other high title company officers / board memebers. This so that their names are current to the people who actually make things happen and approve executive search and compensation firms to go looking for new talent. Why should a CEO bother with Twitter or Facebook when he(or she) can have his(her) current compensation include $10,000 in yearly country club membership payments and riding the corporate jet to exclusive management conferences twice a year.

So in conclusion Fortune 100 CEOs don't need to be "socially" connected because it is not worth their time and money. At least right now...

Per "Tom"'s comment 06-25-09 about Warren Buffet on Twitter. Warren Buffet doesn't even own/carry a cell phone per recent articles. I am sure he has an assistant or other person to do that.

You do bring up a good quesiton of what happens when people cybersquat on major companies names / major ceo names on social networking websites. We haven't figured that one out yet.

Thanks for the interesting research. And interesting timing. On Wednesday Best Buy passed the torch to its new CEO, Brian Dunn, who is active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and the company's internal social network. I wrote about it here:

http://www.minnpost.com/danhaugen/2009/06/25/9796/is_best_buys_brian_dunn_the_most_socially_networked_ceo

Great comments from readers questioning the value and import of CEOs utilizing SM. This kind of frivolous and irresponsible study hearkens back to the 'irrational exuberance' that fueled the dot com bubble and the impetuous adulation and celebrity afforded 22 year-old "CEOs" and their half-baked ideas. Did we learn nothing from that embarrassing lemming migration away from business fundamentals? Where's the proof (or even remote correlation) that SM benefits Fortune 100 companies? Or any company (besides purveyors of SM) for that matter? What does a CEO have to say on facebook or twitter (of such timely import) that can't be effectively represented on their company's website?

Why not skip the lemming hype and do a REAL study on the ROI that companies realize by spending countless hours and advertising dollars pandering to these bastions of self-aggrandizement and busy-body gossip (Hint: there is no measurable ROI). Instead of just parroting the "me-too, I want to be hip and relevant" party line, you might do REAL CEOs a service and gain yourself some credibility by finally dispelling the myth that these media play any significant or quantifiable role in real commerce. In fact, it's highly probable that the net finding is a gross reduction in employee productivity, resulting in a cringeworthy increase in manpower and tech expense and enough nightmare cleanups of misunderstood or rogue employee tweets and posts to keep CEOs bleeding a 24 hour cold sweat.

I'd rather have the CEO of a company I purchase products from (or invest in) focused on building and supporting a better "mousetrap" than pissing away his/her time trying to keep up with the latest social experiment that will wither away as soon as it becomes saturated with bottom feeders (see: craigslist) or is replaced by the next pathetic iteration of populous group think.

Doesn't this support the obvious fact that there is no connection between being active on social media and any kind of interpersonal or business success? Doesn't it also show that despite the lack of social media activity, these CEOs are plenty aware of how their customers are feeling, doing, and buying?

What if twitter and facebook were just diversions? What if all the hubub around how many people read your 140 characters or have friended was just fun and hype and news stories that were all mutually reinforcing?

It's possible right?

Maybe that's why they didn't know it was politically incorrect to fly in private jets to Washington to beg for a bailout. I think even if they don't personally DO it, at least have a clue that they need a presence. What rocks are they living under?

What a great comment thread! I found this study similarly dubious. One thing I didn't see mentioned was Congressman Pete Hoekstra's use of twitter (see Pete Hoekstra is a meme), which attracted him much deserved ridicule after he "tweeted" comparing Republicans to Iranians suffering under a dictatorship. It makes me think social media may be something of a lose-lose proposition for people in authority -- either they risk making a gaffe that alienates their audience, or, to play it safe, they do it in a very managed, inoffensive way that makes it clear to the audience that it's just another public relations tool, conferring little benefit.

People who don't know how to use Twitter (or don't want to) should just use one of the many Twitter applications out there that mine it for insights like

http://tweetnews.me

You can search news from different perspectives and rank by tweets.

-- Shaw

It's simple: CEOs need to be productive. Blogging and Twittering is not productive. You bozos need to wake up and smell the roses. SecondLife != Productivity in FIRST Life.

Where are all the stupendous productivity gains we should be seeing from computers? Have we been able to decimate the number of FTEs required to produce the same results as 50 years ago? No. Why? Because computers have the ability to suck the living life out of everything, equally as well as they have the ability to improve the speed of doing mundane jobs. I've watched CEOs spend their entire day surfing the web, and it's not a pretty sight. If most CEOs could see what their employees were doing all day long in front of their computers, they would probably fire 80% of them.

Of course they don't waste their time adding another 10,000 "friends" to their MySpace account.

Why would a CEO want to stoop to the level of the riff-raff that populates the Internet? Whenever your company attends a high level meeting with a Fortune 500 CEO, you will find that their CEO is matched up with your CEO, their VP is matched up with your VP, their Project Manager has dinner with your Project Manager, and so on down the line. Their CEO does not meet with your Project Manager. So why would their CEO want to converse with, say, Spike the slacker skateboarder who uses obscenity and can't form a grammatically correct sentence?